The BLM intends to roll back critical protections from the 2024 Oil & Gas Leasing Rule that increased industry accountability for oil and gas extraction and cleanup on public lands. These changes could increase habitat destruction, cut off connected landscapes, and bring increased air, water, light, and noise pollution to nearby national parks.
Urge the BLM NOT to advance these rollbacks, and maintain protections for our public lands and adjacent national parks. The proposed rule will hurt the health of our parks and negatively impact the overall visitor experience.
As someone who loves our national parks, I urge you to preserve the safeguards that protect them from irresponsible energy development.
That includes the commonsense oil and gas leasing reforms and protections finalized in the 2024 Fluid Mineral Leases and Leasing Process Rule (2024 Oil and Gas Leasing Rule). More than 80 national park units share a border with BLM lands. Places like Carlsbad Caverns, Chaco, Canyonlands, and Dinosaur National Monument already sit on the front lines — vulnerable to landscape and habitat destruction and to the air, water, light, and sound pollution that energy development brings right up to their borders. Removing the preference criteria that steered oil and gas leasing away from areas important for recreation and cultural, environmental, and wildlife protections is a serious mistake.
The federal government's track record of holding oil and gas companies accountable is already troubling – which was why the leasing reforms were enacted in the first place. Rolling back these provisions would only weaken that accountability further, lowering companies' responsibility to minimize their impact, clean up pollution, and to restore land once extraction has ended. Why should federal requirements be less stringent than those of many states?
Eliminating NEPA comment periods and making it more difficult for people to engage in the federal oil and gas leasing process on our public lands is the exact opposite of what the BLM and Interior Department should be doing. Our parks and other public lands belong to all of us. But selling them out for cheap and placing industry profit above public voices while repealing critical protections is shortchanging the future of these treasured places and the habitats, wildlife, and communities they sustain.
I oppose the proposed changes to the 2024 Oil & Gas Leasing Rule.
